NEWS & NOTES

A hedge fund that owns 4.5 percent of Pinnacle Entertainment renewed its call or the casino operator to split the company to include a real estate investment trust, as Penn National Gaming, Caesars Entertainment and other operators have done. New York investment firm Orange Capital, LLC predicts Pinnacle’s share price could increase between 60 percent and 90 percent in value if the Las Vegas-based company were to create a REIT.  Orange Capital made its initial request in April and issued a statement Thursday after Pinnacle announced its second-quarter earnings.  •  Caesars Entertainment Corp. won approval for a $1.75 billion refinancing from the Illinois Gaming Board, despite objections of some of the operator’s bondholders. A representative of some debt holders told the board that Caesars’ shifting of assets to subsidiaries, nullifying the debt guarantee, is putting the company’s largest unit, Caesars Entertainment Operating Co., in jeopardy. “The financing transaction will, in our view, ultimately pave the road for CEOC’s bankruptcy rather than forestall it,” said attorney Sidney Levinson, who represents holders of more than $1 billion of Caesars’ $23 billion of debt. “The Illinois Gaming Board has a chance to stop the endless shell game that’s being played by Caesars.”  •  Yggdrasil Gaming has developed a fantasy world-themed game entitled Magic Mushrooms, in which players are able to win big on an unchronological draw slot, a first for a high-performance casino product. The majority of standard online slot games have paylines on one side and reels that stop in sequence. Magic Mushrooms uses intuitive gameplay with 40 paylines, 20 from the left and 20 from the right of the game, spread across a diamond shaped 3-4-5-4-3 reel position and with the five reels drawn in an unchronological order of 1-5-2-4-3. Players are also treated to a number of distinctive in-game ambient sounds and music created by specialist sound artists, while the characters themselves were created in-house and first modeled as clay figures before making it to the big screen.  •  Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake last week revealed a plan to welcome the Horseshoe Baltimore casino, opening next month, by renaming a portion of Bayard Street, which leads to the casino, as “Casino Way.” Rawlings-Blake made the announcement official with a press event in which she unveiled the new street sign that will designate the name.  •  CG Technology announced that it has released two new games, “Quick Draw Stud” and “Improve Your Hand,” to its lineup of new proprietary video poker games now available on its popular mobile casino platform. Quick Draw Stud is a multi-hand video poker game featuring a real-money payout on two pair or better. Improve Your Hand features a real-money payout depending on the hand played, according to the pay table. Patrons will be able to play these games for real money on their Apple or Android device, or on their tablets and smart phones anywhere on CG Technology’s partner resort properties after they sign up for a CG Technology Mobile Casino account.  •  Some executives at Atlantic City’s Revel casino will receive about $1.75 million in bonuses if the struggling property is sold at a bankruptcy auction this month. The plan was approved Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Gloria Burns. Records naming the executives were sealed. The plan calls for bonuses to be awarded according to the selling price of the casino-hotel. Bids for the property are due August 4. An auction is set for August 7 in the event there is more than one qualified bidder.  •  MTR Gaming, Eldorado and several affiliates have entered into a merger agreement to turn MTR and Eldorado into wholly-owned subsidiaries of Eclair Holdings Company. They will be known as Eldorado Resorts. The proposed transaction has been approved by MTR stockholders as well as gaming regulators in West Virginia, Louisiana and Ohio.  •  The Las Vegas Monorail recently celebrated its 10th year of operation on the Strip, and could soon celebrate increased ridership. Union Gaming reports that new development including the Quad/Linq, including the High Roller observation wheel, the ongoing rebranding of the former LVH to Westgate, and the grand opening this month of the SLS, could boost ridership by more than 1.5 million passengers this year.  ?  A tentative agreement has been reached between casino workers and Loto Quebec. More than 1,000 croupiers staged a one-day walkout last month to protest not having had a contract for 16 months. Details of the agreement have not been made public yet. Dealers were asking for a 2 percent wage increase per year for the next five years.  ?  Manhattan meeting space will grow from 1.1 million square feet in 2000 to just under 1.4 million square feet in 2018. In New York City, meeting space will increase from approximately 3 million square feet to nearly 3.5 million square feet during the same period. That’s a growth rate of 5.3 percent, compare to the U.S. average of 0.8 percent or the top 25 market average of 1 percent, reports Hotel News Now.  ?   The Downtown Las Vegas pawn shop featured on TV’s “Pawn Stars” will expand to include 16 retail shops and six restaurants. The location of the History Channel reality show draws daily crowds, hence the $2 million project near Container Park.  ?  The Nevada Taxicab Authority will allow as many as 160 additional cabs during a meeting of the Men’s Apparel Guild in California. MAGIC will bring an estimated 80,000 conventioneers to the city August 18-20. According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, conventions are part of an upward trend in visitation to the city.  ?  One of two casino boats operating out of Little River, South Carolina has stopped operations. SunCruz Casino, which employs about 200 people, stopped its operations without warning or explanation July 28. SunCruz had been involved in a legal fight with Horry County over a $7 per passenger fee the county had imposed on the boat.  ?  A suspect has been arrested for allegedly robbing the Bellagio in Las Vegas. According to the Las Vegas Sun, the man booked as a John Doe at the Clark County jail late last month has been identified as Scott A. Carmitchel. Police and casino sources estimate he took between $30,000 and $50,000 from a cashier at gunpoint before fleeing on foot.  •  Gamblers who patronize nine racinos in New York state now have two extra hours to place their bets. A change in state law approved by the legislature and signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo allows racinos to close at 6 a.m. instead of the previous 4 a.m. deadline, according to the Albany Business Review. Cuomo signed the legislation last month. Though the law states the changes took effect immediately upon Cuomo’s approval July 22, a spokesman for the NYSGC said tracks must apply to the agency 60 days before any changes to its hours of operations can b
e made. It is uncertain how many of the racinos will make the change, officials said.  •   So-called “historical horse racing” machines, machines that let players bet on races that took place in the past, but with the names and locations removed, were installed June 1 at Les Bois Park in Idaho. Players watch archived videos of previously run games. Some critics say the machines too closely resemble slot machines. Historical horse racing machines have been credited with turning around the fortunes of several racetracks that have adopted them. • The election of UNITE HERE to represent 600 employees at Graton Resort & Casino in Northern California has been certified, although it is uncertain whom the union will negotiate with. The tribe owns the casino, but Station Casinos manages it. None of its Las Vegas casinos are union-organized. Nevada is a Right-to-work state. Station has had difficulties about this situation, with the National Labor Relations Board ruling that Station violated multiple labor laws in fighting unionization. “We fully respect and support the tribe’s neutrality agreement with the union,” said a spokesman for Station. • The Chumash Tribe of Santa Ynez, California, is planning a $160 million expansion project of its Santa Ynez Hotel and Casino that will include a 12-story hotel tower with 215 rooms for a total of 315. It will also expand the casino floor and make room for more dining.  No new slot machines will be added. The project has been in the works for about a year. It is independent of the tribe’s plans to put 1,400 acres at Camp Four into trust as reservation land.  The area is in the midst of the wine country in the central part of the state. • The National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) recently reported that Indian gaming collected $28 billion in 2013, a growth of 0.5 percent over the previous year. The NIGC each year calculates the Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) of the 235 gaming tribes from independent audit reports from the tribes. Revenue is calculated as the difference between gaming receipts and payouts.  •  Echo Entertainment has completed the sale of its Jupiters Townsville Hotel and Casino in north Queensland to Colonial Leisure Group for the equivalent of US$70 million. Colonial says it will transform the 20-table, 320-slot property into a “leading regional resort.”  •  Australia-listed resort operator Donaco International plans to spin off its identic mobile technology unit to focus on “operating and investing in leisure and entertainment businesses in the Asia Pacific,” the company said. The buyer, OMI Holdings, is funding the acquisition with A$12 million of shares, which will leave Donaco in control of 78 percent of OMI upon completion of the deal. Donaco operates the Aristo International casino hotel in northern Vietnam.  •  Macau International Airport is expanding its passenger terminal to add 1.5 million passengers to its current capacity of 6 million. Construction is expected to start before year’s end. Plans also are in the works to add new routes to the Chinese cities of Xian and Shijiazhuang and talks are in progress with mainland-based carrier Xiamen Airlines on a possible direct flight to Tianjin and with three budget carriers on direct flights from Taiwan. A new private hangar also is slated to open the end of this year.   •  China’s Sinogreen Energy International Group plans to enter the Macau gaming market through an acquisition by casino operator and junket promoter Jimei Group. Sinogreen plans to sell 325 million new shares to Jimei, representing 69.5 percent of the company, and will also issue HK$55.7 million in convertible notes to launch junket operations in Macau. Jimei operates in VIP rooms at the Grand Lisboa, MGM Grand, the Venetian Macao and Wynn Macau. The company also operates two resorts in the Philippines and a gambling ship based in Hong Kong.  •  Hong Kong-listed Louis XIII Holdings has received approval from the Macau government for its building plans for a luxury casino hotel of the same name on Cotai. Foundation work has been under way on the project since June, the company said. Plans call for 60 table games, a hotel consisting of 170 suites, 29 villas, including a “royal villa” of more than 20,000 square feet, and a branch of Paris’ Michelin-starred L’Ambroisie restaurant.  •  In a move that is expected to facilitate the growth of Vietnam’s foreigners-only casino market, the governor of the State Bank of Vietnam has issued a draft circular which allows gamblers to receive their winnings in foreign currencies. Currently, casinos are required to pay out all winnings in Vietnamese dong.  •  Authorities in the Czech Republic recently raided lottery and casino operators in Prague and Jablonec and Nisei in northern Bohemia in a crackdown on tax delinquents, seizing cash worth billions of koruna, the government said. A spokeswoman for the General Financial Directorate said the targeted operators owe the state almost 20 million koruna in lottery payments and direct and indirect taxes and that further raids will be carried out. Czechs spent an estimated 124 billion koruna (US$6 billion) on gambling last year, 51.4 billion of it on interactive-style video lottery terminals, generating 28.6 billion koruna for operators.